Most Important, Unloved Cable...

@grannyring,

You make a very valid point. We all waited for this test and it was quite disappointing to see the poor choice of source and cables. I have been saying all along, laptop is not the best renderer to stream music let alone testing out cable differences.

To your point, it does take time to fully appreciate a cable in your system. Frankly, this 10-20 second cable swap is nothing but a cheap gimmick. The cables used in this test regardless of price point wouldn’t have yielded any audible differences.

A while ago i did a shootout between USB cables using my windows laptop as a source going direct into a $7K DAC and I couldn’t discern any audible differences between Platinum Starlight 7 - $500, Furutech ADL USB - $200 and a $10 USB cable generic printer cable.

On flip side, Wireworld Platinum sounded amazing compared to other two USB cables between Aurender N100 / N10 and Modwright Elyse DAC.

Coming back to your cable trial, I have tested Wireworld Ethernet Cable in my system and didn’t care for it in a direct comparison with SoTM dCBL-CAT7 and Purist CAT7, YMMV.

I am currently using these cables and found them to be best among the one’s I have tested below in my system,

Belkin CAT6
SR Active SE CAT6
Purist CAT7
SoTM dCBL-CAT7
AQVOX CAT7
Wireworld CAT 8 (SME)
RAL Cryosilver Reference CAT8

Source components:
Aurender N10
Bluesound Vault 2

I don’t expect everyone to hear or appreciate audible improvements be it cables, room treatments, fuses and so on. IMHO, cables are just as important as picking out speakers and components. At the end of the day, it comes down to trusting your own ears and enjoying the music.

@lalitk 

How would you describe the difference between the  SoTM dCBL-CAT7 and the WireWorld Cat 8 (assuming Starlight)?

I've had the Supra Cat8 for the past year and just tried the Wireworld Chroma Cat8 and while the Chroma is more detailed I'm still not sure I prefer it over the Supra just yet. The Supra in my system sounds a little warmer.

The test has no value for the claimant either.but you are free to believe whatever you want to.

The results are what they are.

My questions are: When would you be willing to sit for a bias controlled evaluation?

How are you able to interject on behalf of the claimant?

How do you know it had no value for the claimant?

How do you know their custom cable with all it's treatments isn't the equivalent of others in the industry?

How do you know what their system sounds like? I do. 

Here’s the crux:

It’s patently ignorant to support numerous sighted evaluation but pan bias controlled evaluations even when we only have a few instances so far.

It’s a single instance farther in the correct direction than any single one of you have actually made it.

Again, feel free to have me out with a client / server and your USB DAC and downstream chain. Just cover my travel expenses if you can’t hit 18/20.

Honestly, if it takes two weeks for a ’change’ to be ’noticed’ there are other things at play mentally.